New movies: 'Five-Year Engagement,' 'Pirates!'

Al Alexander

Thursday

Apr 26, 2012 at 12:01 AMApr 26, 2012 at 6:50 AM

A glance at movies opening this weekend.

FIVE-YEAR ENGAGEMENT

Director Nicholas Stoller and writer Jason Segel, the team responsible for the unforgettably funny “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” combine their respective talents once again for a Judd Apatow-style rom-com about a betrothed couple (Segel and Emily Blunt) that encounters conflicts every time they try to set a wedding date.

THE PIRATES! BAND OF MISFITS

Hugh Grant lends his voice to an animated film for the first time with his turn as an egocentric ship captain intent on winning the long-elusive title of Pirate of the Year. To do that, he’ll need to best his bitter rivals Black Bellamy (Jeremy Piven) and Cutlass Liz (Salma Hayek).

THE RAVEN

An emaciated John Cusack steps into the scrawny body of Edgar Allen Poe for a tale that imagines what would happen if a crazed killer used the writer’s fictional tales as an inspiration for a series of grisly murders. And who better to help the police solve these crimes than Poe himself? Alice Eve and Brendan Gleeson co-star.

SAFE

Is it just me, or are all of Jason Statham’s movies starting to look the same? In this one, he plays a mixed martial arts fighter out for revenge after the Russian mob kills his family and banishes him penniless to the streets of New York.

TURN ME ON DAMMIT

Writer-director Jannicke Systad Jacobsen bravely – and humorously – examines the everyday life of an oversexed teenage girl (Helene Bergsholm), who is sort of a younger, female version of Michael Fassbender’s sex-addicted businessman in “Shame,” but, hopefully, not nearly as boring.

MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL

For my money, the funniest film ever made celebrates its 35th anniversary with a meticulously restored print in which the “killer rabbit” never looked meaner and the prancing Knights of the Round Table, well, gayer.

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